Conventional prechamber spark plugs for gas engines may simply aim at achieving combustion in a prechamber with no particular regards to the fuel distribution, uniformity of flow fields and mixing of residual gases inside of the prechamber of the spark plug. This may result in undesirable ignition delay, increased propensity to flame quenching, and autoignition; furthermore, the emerging flame jets may be weak, resulting in poor combustion performance of the fuel-air mixture in the main combustion chamber of the gas engine.
Engines operating on gaseous fuels, such as natural gas, may be supplied with a lean fuel mixture having a relatively high ratio of oxidizer to fuel. Conventional prechamber spark plugs may be used to enhance the lean flammability limits in lean burn engines. As one example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,922,551 describes a prechamber spark plug which reduces electrode erosion by spreading the discharge energy over a wider surface area via a swirling effect created by periphery holes in an end cap.
However, in general there remain a number of unresolved disadvantages with the use of conventional prechamber spark plugs in lean burn engines and specifically as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,922,551, as follows. First, conventional prechamber spark plugs may have pre-combustion chambers that do not adequately concentrate fuel at the spark gap region of the spark plug. In such cases, the flow field forces within the spark gap region may be chaotic resulting in zones with either very low flow fields or very high flow fields. This can result in either very short ignition delay as the flame kernel is grown very rapidly by the high flow field forces or it can result in flame kernel quenching as there are no flow field forces to move the flame kernel away from the quenching surfaces. Second, conventional prechamber spark plugs may promote flame kernel development in proximity to flame quenching surfaces or promote flame growth toward flame quenching surfaces. Third, the configuration of the prechamber may not mix in-filling streams with residual gases to sufficiently lower the temperature inside of the prechamber or the internal surface of the prechamber, which may result in autoignition of the fuel-oxidizer mixture. Fourth, the configuration of the prechamber may not result in sufficiently fast burn rates with lean fuel mixtures resulting in deployment of flame jets into the main combustion chamber, which by comparison with faster burn rates have lesser momentum.
There is a need to address the foregoing deficiencies in the art.